Fast Money Blog- 2/28/25
This week on Wall Street, all eyes were on the NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA) earnings release.
On Wednesday, February 26th, NVDA released its Q4 2025 earnings with record quarterly revenue of $39.33 billion, up 78% year-over-year. This quarter was the first to include sales of the company's next-generation AI processor, called Blackwell.
In Q4 NVDA reported record Data Center revenue of $35.6 billion, up 93% from a year ago. (Note that this segment represents 91% of their total revenue.)
NVIDIA’s data center business includes GPU-accelerated data centers, AI software, and networking solutions.
Tyrone, what is so special about the Blackwell processor?
As artificial intelligence systems are moving from perception and generative AI to inference and reasoning, Blackwell is a chip with millions of times the current amount of computing capacity, which is needed for this new-generation AI.
Not only that, these “long thinking” AI responses will require AI systems that use as much as 100 times the amount of Nvidia chips as they do now. This suggests that NVIDIA has a head’s up on the AI race.
While I think this company will experience tremendous revenue growth, I personally don’t think their tech innovations are worth the high risk.
Home Improvement Companies Release Earnings
This week we also got earnings releases from the two biggest companies in the home improvement sector.
Here’s what you need to know:
The Home Depot, Inc. (HD) released strong Q4 2024 earnings with Q4 top-line revenue of $39.7 billion, up 14.1% year-over-year.
In a good sign, comparable store sales grew 0.8% in the quarter, which broke an 8-month decline.
More Q4 Highlights:
E-commerce sales increased 9% year-over-year.
Foot traffic increased 7.6% year-over-year.
In fiscal 2024, revenue grew 4.5% year-over-year to $159.51 billion.
Even better, Home Depot announced a 2.2% increase in its quarterly dividend to $2.30 per share, for an annual dividend of $9.20 per share.
These earnings were outstanding! I expect to see HD to benefit due to the rebuild from the California fires.
In the home improvement space, you should know that Home Depot's crisis logistic management is superior to that of Lowe’s, giving them the advantage when it comes to natural disaster recovery.
Heads up: I see HD stock going up 100% in the next 5 years.
Lowe’s Companies (LOW) reported Q4 2024 earnings, with quarterly top-line revenue of $18.5 billion, down just slightly year-over-year.
In addition, foot traffic was down 1.3% and for the fiscal year 2024, top-line revenue was $83.6 billion, down 3% year-over-year.
However, on a good note, comparable store sales rose 0.2% for Q4, their first year-over-year increase since Q3 2022. Lowe's attributed the increase to higher Professional sales, strong holiday performance, and rebuilding efforts in the wake of recent hurricanes.
The company also saw online quarterly sales growth of 1.5% year-over-year.
Like Home Depot, I think they will also see some sales growth due to the future rebuild in California caused by the recent wildfires.
It's interesting to note that Lowe's and Home Depot appeal to a slightly different customer base. The majority of Lowe's customers are DIY'ers while Home Depot's customers include more professionals, working on larger projects. Home Depot also has a larger market share than Lowe's.
In general, 4th quarter earnings were outstanding for most Dow components and I foresee members of the Dow experiencing explosive growth over the next five years.
As a successful investor, the key going forward will be in knowing which Dow stocks will excel and which ones will fall behind.
Tyrone Jackson, The Wealthy Investor